Independent and brave small publisher Jia Ja Zhi, run by Yuan Di and Huang Yating, has just released a precious book with the long-term project of the Chinese photographer MuGe (Huang Rong).
“Going Home” is a series that the photographer started in 2005, when he came back from the city to his family’s land. Along the emotional return trip, MuGe found disappering traditions, moving people and the beginning of a new unknown life, after the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.
MuGe tells about people and landscape and of their melancholy as silent poetry through his black and whie plates. MuGe is one of the men and women whom he met. There is no critic and no judgement in what he’s looking at, all the people in the Three Gorges Dam region, between Chongqing and Chengdu, seem to have full awareness about the consequence of this environment and the social drastic changes.
MuGe (木 格) was born and grew up in Chongqing, China, in 1979. He graduated from Sichuan Normal University with a degree in Broadcasting and Television Directing, and worked as a photographer, photo editor and lecturer after graduation.
He has held solo exhibitions at Zen Photo Gallery in Tokyo and Anastasia Photo Gallery in New York and has participated in “Rising Dragon: Contemporary Chinese Photography” at the Katonah Museum of Art in New York. He was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award in 2011, selected as a Juror’s Pick for the 2012 Daylight Photo Awards, awarded the Dali International Photography Festival Photography Award and selected as First Edition 2012 Hey Hot Shot.
His photographs have been featured in publications such as the New York Times, EYEMAZING, Le Monde, FOTO8 and Chinese Photography.
In 2013, MuGe has published the book “Ash” and he has been nominated for PDN’s 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch.
MuGe now lives and works in Chengdu, Sichuan.
BOOK
“Going Home”
Photography by MuGe
112 pages
57 B&W plates
Jia Za Zhi Press
Beijing, 2013
Limited Edition of 600
ISBN 978-988-12631-2-4
http://mugephoto.com
